Andreas Angelidakis

Andreas Angelidakis
Center for the critical appreciation of antiquity, 2022
System for a Home Stylite, foam and canvas blocks, dimensions variable

Center for the critical appreciation of antiquity, Infinity Teleport, 2022
Video with sound, 5΄ 40΄΄

Courtesy the artist
Commissioned by Audemars Piguet Contemporary

Andreas Angelidakis’ Center for the Critical Appreciation of Antiquity combines the literal meaning of archaeology, that is, the science that studies the material culture of the past, with one of its basic metaphorical interpretations, acquired post-psychoanalysis, namely our quest for the elements that have constructed our personality. This body of the work is inspired by the position held in the historical, architectural, cultural and erotic life of Athens by the Temple of Olympian Zeus, a prominent monument at the heart of the city and a site for male homoerotic hook-ups. In addition, according to one account, stylites were living on the pillars of the Temple of Olympian Zeus until the 19th century. Angelidakis retraces his personal history, from his childhood and the construction of makeshift architectural structures out of cushions, to asserting his desire and his maturation as an artist and architect, and combines it with the layers of the city, to build a system of soft ruins, an observation point for a digital reconstruction of the self, the city and sexuality. Visitors can move the soft ruins as they wish.

Angelidakis maintains a multi-disciplinary practice as architect, artist, curator and writer centred on research and exhibition, often examined through the lens of the internet. He has consistently challenged the end-product of architectural practice by reversing the representation-to-realisation sequence of the production of buildings. He often starts with an existing building, producing models, films, ruins, installations or alternative histories, blurring fact and fiction and smoothing out the borders between the real and the virtual.

Biography

Andreas Angelidakis lives and works in Athens. He is trained as an architect with a Bachelor of Architecture from the Southern California Institute of Architecture and a Master’s degree in Advanced Architectural Design from Columbia University. He has contributed as an artist or curator in a range of global exhibitions including: “The State of the Art of Architecture” at the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial, the 12th Baltic Triennial at the Contemporary Art Center in Vilnius and “Super Superstudio” at PAC Milano, all in 2015, as well as “documenta14” in Athens and Kassel in 2017. In 2019, he participated in the Bergen Assembly, contributing a multifunctional social seating system to Paul B. Preciado’s “Parliament of Bodies” for documenta14, as well as the Biennial of Moving Image at OGR in Torino. Among the exhibitions he has curated are “The System of Objects” at Deste Foundation in Athens, “Super Superstudio” at PAC in Milano, “Fin de Siècle” at Swiss Institute in New York, Period Rooms at Het Nieuwe Instituut Rotterdam, and “OOO Object Oriented Ontology” at Kunsthalle Basel.

https://www.angelidakis.com/

 

 

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